Delay mounting of external hdd on pogoplug

Hi

I use a pogoplug as a Logitech Media Server and as a TimeCapsule (for TImeMachine backups from a Mac) and it works nicely. I just have one problem: after a dirty shutdown, in case that the external hdd becomes corrupted, the fixing might take quite some time.

To have the LMS available immediately after a reboot, I would like to delay the mounting of the external hdd untill the system is up and running. But I could not find anything how I could achieve this.

Is this possible?
Can this be done by using fstab options (I don't think so)?
Do I have to use the no-auto mount optin in the fstab and run

mount -a

through some final init script? If yes, how can I do this?

Thanks,

Rainer

there is an option in fstab to tell the system what order to perform fsck. its something along the lines of

<file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

/dev/mydev /mnt/here ext4 noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro 0 3

the important options being the last two, dump and pass they define the action and the order.

http://www.linuxstall.com/fstab/ should be a good starter for ten

Hm - I think there might be another problem. I have only for /dev/root pass set to one - the others are 0. I could mount with mount -a, but the file system had errors. Would therse errors have prevented the boot?

@Rainer,

You don't have to have everything in fstab. Just rootfs.

The external HDD is not going to by checked for error if it's not in fstab. Add a mount statement in /etc/rc.local to mount it. That way you can delay mounting it the way you intended.

For your purpose, it's best to use Ext3 for everything so that the system will survive any dirty shutdown (since you expect that to happen from time to time in your setup?)

-bodhi
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OK - to specify the mount points, I will then use the "noauto" option in the fstab and add

mount -a

as the last statement of the /etc/rc.local

I am using ext4 for all drives - so I assume this should also work. I abandoned ext2 early on because exactly of these reasons.

The reason why this happens is that I am shutting down the pogoplug in the evenings remotely and, when "the lights are off" (on the pogoplug...) I switch of the wall socket. But because of some strange reason it is not shut down p[roperly, I leave it on. So it happens that in the morning the pogoplug is still hanging, so I have to switch it of and reboot.

But I should probably just leave it running - no harm done and I guess very little energy used. I use hdparm for the external hdds (not rootfs).

Thanks,

Rainer